Interview with Roy Wilhelm, February 28, 1993

==??==

'''Roy''': ......that bunch up at Mineral and Grandpa knew him, the whole family knew him.  They was brothers lived up there and this one brother got mad and killed the other one and so the law picked him up.  So he got some rich Mexican that he knew to sign bail so he could get out.  So he went over to New Mexico visitin' around and he was gone for about four or five months.  And when he come back the rich Mexican that had signed his bail bond, he'd been worried all that time, he didn't know the guy was goin' to go over there visitin' around and so he went down and told the sheriff, he says, "If he ever comes back, why I'm not on his bail anymore, lock him up."  So here comes the guy . . . oh, it was some guy in New Mexico, Sol Luna or somebody like that, and says, "Give this to the sheriff when you go over there."  This letter, it was sealed and when they got over here it was tellin' the sheriff, "I'm not a goin' his bond anymore."  So they locked him up.  Well, it happened over a period that St. Johns and Vernon was a district, and he (B.H. Wilhelm) was the justice of the peace over there so the preliminaries had to be held over there to find out whether he was guilty enough to be bound over to trial in the Superior Court, so they had him there.  And there was a bunch of his friends from up at, friends and relatives up at Vernon and Mineral, come down there (Concho) to get him and take him home.  They figured it was all cut and dried if all else failed, they knew old Wilhelm was their friend.  So Gramps, he found plenty of evidence that he'd killed his brother and done it in cold blood.  So he bound him over to appear over to St. Johns.  Then the sheriff had gone back and left Grandpa responsible, so when he bound him over he just had his buddy there.  They got the guy, got the handcuffs on him, and handcuffed him to the buggy and they headed out.  These other s.o.b.'s, they didn't know what to do about it, so they rode for reinforcements and they damn near killed a bunch of good horses.  They run 'em all the way to Mineral.  I guess they changed there, told ol Casimiro Padilla about it.  "Boy," he says, "we'll ketch 'em, we'll ketch 'em 'fore they get to St. Johns, if they's just in a buggy."  And [[Zemira George Wilhelm|Pa]] said when the old man topped the black ridge over here they could see the s.o.b.'s come out of the narrows up the Big Hollow there.  Big cloud of smoke and they were runnin'.  An army of Mexicans, tryin' to cut him off.  But he just put those old ponies into a gallop and come on over the hill.  When he found out he'd lost, old thing, why he went back. Now he didn't have anything against Grandpa.  He wanted to get that guy loose he'd a killed Grandpa to get him.  You see he had a life of some kind over there after all this Indian trouble and everthing and all this is baled into, it might have been a long three years, but it was from 1881 to 1884.  (Mormon Settlement in Arizona has B.H. Wilhelm in Concho in March 1879)  I says to myself, well the way he cut a pretty wide swath and got places and built things and ever' damn thing, he was pretty well off when he got here, but he wasn't when he left.  He never left them one buck, and that's a pretty short time and he was gettin' a Justice of the Peace salary part of the time and he was gettin' captain of the guard part of the time.  It was the only pay job in the whole bunch.  He was a spendin' money.   

'''John''':  Could have.  For instance after B.H. went to Mexico and was down there for awhile, when did he come back to the States?   

'''Roy''':  He, you see him and Grace split up while they was down there in Mexico and he was working mines, working in mines in Mexico and then he got workin' mines both sides of the border and Grandma, they sold her place, in Concho, after they got in the sheep business and made Vernon their headquarters, they is [[Zemira George Wilhelm|Pa]] and Haight.  Aunt Fan, my dad's sister younger than him was married to Uncle Art, you remember Uncle Art?  Well they lived down on the Gila river this side of Silver City. The old man in his workin' mines to mines, he got over to the copper and silver mines around Silver City.  And then him and the old lady got back together, the one that he'd left here, they never did separate, he just didn't come back up here and so there they were, man and wife again.  And he was divorced from what's her name or she divorced him.  And he come back up here and they lived on the seven-bar-tee place, that big flat in the north west corner of Vernon valley.   

'''Roy''': Yeah, they lived there, over against the hill, had a dugout.  Dug into the hill and (what happened to her homestead in Vernon?) in front of it was just like a house a stickin' out of the hill.  And after they lived there, well finally the boys advised him to go.  [[Zemira George Wilhelm|Pa]] and Haight paid for the move and she went with him.  He couldn't go to town and ever get back with any groceries or any money.  He'd get on a hell roarin' drunk and finally they got tired of it and advised him that he was just throwin' a kink into everthin'.  They'd foot the bill, pay his way, he'll take his wife and go on down and be close to his daughter there.